Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and for ten years chief minister of state at Weimar.

See also: Faust, and The Sorrows of Young Werther, and the German version of this page.

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• There is strong shadow where there is much light.
  • Götz von Berlichingen, Act I (1773)

• One lives but once in the world.
  • Clavigo, Act I, sc. i (1774)

• If you inquire what the people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere!"
  • Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther), May 17 (1774-1787)

• Getting along with women, Knocking around with men, Having more credit than money, Thus one goes through the world.
  • Claudine von Villa Bella (1776)

• When young one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.
  • Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar (6 March 1780)

• Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind; Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm, Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.
  • Who rides, so late, through night and wind? It is the father with his child. He holds the boy in the crook of his arm He holds him safe, he keeps him warm.
    • Der Erlkönig (1782)

• Noble be man, Helpful and good! For that alone Sets hims apart From every other creature On earth.
  • Das Göttliche (The Divine) (1783)

• In der Kunst ist das Beste gut genug.
  • In art the best is good enough.
  • Italian Journey (March 3, 1787)

• A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.
  • Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. i (1790)

• A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.
  • Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. ii (1790)

• Untersuchen was ist, und nicht was behagt
  • Investigate what is, and not what pleases.
    • Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt (The Attempt as Mediator of Object and Subject) (1792)

• Die Liebe herrscht nicht, aber sie bildet; und das ist mehr!
  • Love does not dominate, it cultivates. And that is more.
    • Das Märchen (1795), as translated by Hermann J. Weigand in Wisdom and Experience (1949); also translated elsewhere as The Fairy-Tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, and simply The Tale]
  • Variant translations:
  • Love does not rule; but it trains, and that is more.
    • As translated by Thomas Carlyle The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (1832)
  • Love rules (and reigns) not, but it forms (builds and 'trains'); and that is more!
    • As quoted in "'Human Immortalities : The Old and the New" by Thaddeus Burr Wakeman, in The Open Court Vol. XX, No. 1 (January 1906), p. 104

• We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.
  • Hermann und Dorothea (1797)

• The spirits that I summoned up I now can't rid myself of.
  • Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) (1797)

• One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.
  • Propylaea (1798) Introduction

• The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.
  • Propylaea (1798) Introduction

• In limitations he first shows himself the master, And the law can only bring us freedom.
  • Was Wir Bringen (1802)

• One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
  • Letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter (December 3, 1812)

• Who wants to understand the poem Must go to the land of poetry; Who wishes to understand the poet Must go to the poet's land.
  • West-östlicher Diwan, motto (1819)

• For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.
  • West-östlicher Diwan, Buch des Paradies (1819)

• Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?
  • Letter to Eckermann (December 30, 1823)

• All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.
  • Letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter (November 26, 1825)

• One must be something in order to do something.
  • Conversation with Eckermann (October 20, 1828)

• If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.
  • Letter to Eckermann (February 4, 1829)

• The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it...but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.
  • Essay on Experimentation

• Willst du immer weiterschweifen? Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah. Lerne nur das Glück ergreifen, denn das Glück ist immer da.
  • Do you wish to roam farther and farther? See the good that lies so near. Just learn how to capture your luck, for your luck is always there.
  • Variant translation: Do you wish to roam farther and farther? See! The Good lies so near. Only learn to seize good fortune, For good fortune's always here.
  • Erinnerung

• O'er all the hilltops Is quiet now, In all the treetops Hearest thou Hardly a breath; The birds are asleep in the trees: Wait; soon like these Thou too shalt rest.
  • Wandrers Nachtlied (Wanderer's Nightsong)

• Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren.
  • Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
  • The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe as translated by Bailey Saunders (1893) Maxim 225

• Amerika, du hast es besser—als unser Kontinent, der alte.
  • America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.
  • Wendts Musen-Almanach (1831)

• Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. Not in the morning alone, not only at mid-day he charmeth; Even at setting, the sun is still the same glorious planet.
  • The Poems of Goethe Translated in the original metres by Edgar Alfred Bowring

• I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make a life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture, or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de –escalated, and a person humanized or dehumanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786-1830)

• Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt Der in den Zweigen wohnet.
  • I sing as the bird sings That lives in the boughs.
  • Bk. II, Ch. 11

• Wer nichts wagt, gerwinnt nichts. Wer nie sein Brod mit Tränen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte Auf seinem Bette weinend sass, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte.
  • Nothing venture, nothing gain. Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours Weeping upon his bed has sate, He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.
  • Bk. II, Ch. 13; translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Knowst thou the land where the lemon trees bloom, Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom, Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?
  • Bk. III, Ch. 1

• What's it to you if I love you?
  • Philine in Bk. IV, Ch. 9
  • Variant translation: If I love you, what business is it of yours?

• One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
  • Bk. V, Ch. 1

• To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence—this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.
  • Bk. VII, Ch. 5

• Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.
  • Bk. VII, Ch. 9

• Die Welt ist so leer, wenn man nur Berge, Flüsse und Städte darin denkt, aber hie und da Iemand zu wissen, der mit uns übereinstimmt, mit dem wir auch stillschweigend fortleben, das macht uns dieses Erdenrund erst zu einem bewohnten Garten.
  • The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
  • "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre," in Goethes Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 7 (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1874), p. 520.

Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)

• Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.
  • Act I, sc. i

• A useless life is an early death.
  • Act I, sc. ii

• One says a lot in vain, refusing; The other mainly hears the "No."
  • Act I, sc. iii

• Pleasure and love are the pinions of great deeds.
  • Act II, sc. i

• Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.
  • Act IV, sc. iv

Roman Elegies (1789)

• Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces! Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb? All things are alive in your sacred walls Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.
  • Elegy 1

• I'm gazing at church and palace, ruin and column, Like a serious man making sensible use of a journey, But soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple, Love's temple, receiving its new initiate. Though you're a whole world, Rome, still, without Love, The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.
  • Elegy 1

• Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages, That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone! If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him, His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.
  • Elegy 2 (First version)

• A world without love would be no world.
  • Elegy 2

• Beloved, don't fret that you gave yourself so quickly! Believe me, I don't think badly or wrongly of you. The arrows of Love are various: some scratch us, And our hearts suffer for years from their slow poison. But others strong-feathered with freshly sharpened points Pierce to the marrow, and quickly inflame the blood. In the heroic ages, when gods and goddesses loved, Desire followed a look, and joy followed desire.
  • Elegy 3

• I feel I'm happily inspired now on Classical soil: The Past and Present speak louder, more charmingly. Here, as advised, I leaf through the works of the Ancients With busy hands, and, each day, with fresh delight. But at night Love keeps me busy another way: I become half a scholar but twice as contented. And am I not learning, studying the shape Of her lovely breasts: her hips guiding my hand?
  • Elegy 5

Venetian Epigrams (1790)

• All Nine often used to come to me, I mean the Muses: But I ignored them: my girl was in my arms. Now I’ve left my sweetheart: and they’ve left me, And I roll my eyes, seeking a knife or rope. But Heaven is full of gods: You came to aid me: Greetings, Boredom, mother of the Muse.
  • Epigram 27

• Is it so big a mystery what god and man and world are? No! but nobody knows how to solve it so the mystery hangs on.
  • As translated by Jerome Rothenberg

• Much there is I can stand. Most things not easy to suffer I bear with quiet resolve, just as a God commands it. Only a few things I find as repugnant as snakes and poison. These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs and garlic and Christ.
  • Epigram 60.

• Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it. Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison — These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and †.
  • Variant translation: Lots of things I can stomach. Most of what irks me I take in my stride, as a god might command me. But four things I hate more than poisons & vipers: tobacco smoke, garlic, bedbugs, and Christ.
  • Epigram 67, as translated by Jerome Rothenberg

• Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores & sinners, seeing I go in for that myself.
  • As translated by Jerome Rothenberg

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